GINA FERGUSON

Please go to my new blogspot

2009-10-03T22:38:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone. I will now continue my blog from my new blogspot www.ginacrawford.blogspot.com
as Brett and I are now married and my new name is Gina Crawford. So might as well get used to it now!!

Frustration

2009-09-26T13:21:00.000-07:00

Well it turns out I shouldn't be a podiatrist and give people advice about their shoes. The tendon that was the problem is now perfectly fine but my sore point has now moved to the point directly underneath my over tight shoelaces around my ankle, now if that's not a coincidence!! And after doing some googling on the internet it did indeed say that over tight shoe laces could cause this. So Friday was my day off and then yesterday I did my 6 hour bike ride and I was supposed to run for an hour off the bike but walked instead. That is the stupid thing as that I can walk with no pain at all and I can walk pretty fast. In fact Brett thinks I could walk the marathon and do a 3.45 which is not too much slower than my running speed!! It comes from my days living in Wellington where University and my home were at the top of the hill and my work down the hill in town at Burger King. I used to have only a few minutes to get from lectures to work down in Lambton Quay and as I never ran back then I used to walk really, really fast. Of course I got many, many strange looks from the men in suits but I always got to work on time and Brett and I used to joke that if I wanted to ever go to the Olympics I could perhaps enter in the 20 or 50km walk. But the idea of walking the marathon horrifies me so I am resting my ankle for a few days in the hope that this will solve it once and for all and then I will be able to run as normal.
So of course the timing is not ideal for my first ever injury but I will just have to grin and bear it. Running comes quite naturally to me, not like cycling where I have to work really, really hard and any time off after a race puts me well back and being on the bike feels foreign. In running after a break I can always feel fine and I guess my fitness will not suffer with all the cycling, swimming and walking that is going on. I just really hope that in 2 weeks time I will be able to complete the race as normal as with everything that has happened in the last few months (viruses, heart problems etc) I just really, really want to go out there and race my heart out (pardon the pun).

Lace those shoes up .......Right to the top

2009-09-21T11:32:00.000-07:00

A few months ago I read in a book about getting fit and training methods to beware of feelings of invincibility. Now I know what this means. While training in Noosa my running had greatly improved. I felt unstoppable, I could run on the treadmill at 17kph and it would feel like a jog, I felt like I could keep going all day at that pace. In the 2 days I was back in NZ before heading to the States I went for a run with Brett. I was jogging and Brett could hardly keep up, he said wow you're running has really improved. I felt invincible, and the next thing I know I roll my ankle.
That is nothing new to me. I roll my ankles all the time. What makes for a great swimmer's kick in my mind makes for a pretty unstable runner's ankle. So I am used to hurting my ankles all the time, but this time was different. When I got home I couldn't move it inwards without a lot of pain and it was really uncomfortable. I didn't run on it the next day but on the Monday I went for my 30 min goodbye jog with Lilly and Raro, but I could only make it 15 minutes. It hurt every step. I then taped it up and got on the plane to the States. Over the week I didn't do much running because it was taper week (that was lucky!) and things were definitely improving. Only a bit of pain usually when running uphill and in the pool kicking (there was no way I was pushing off from the wall) and I felt confident I would get through the marathon OK. But it turns out I didn't need to as the stomach bug took me out for 3 whole days and yet again no more running and then the 30 hour trip back home again.
We arrived home on Thursday morning and I was straight back into training. Swim at the pool, a nice 3 hour bike ride and then an hour run. After very little running for 10 days or so I expected my ankle would be completely heeled, but there were still a few twinges every now and again. This is strange I thought as I am a very quick heeler usually. I can go to bed with a sore muscle and wake up completely normal. So I knew it could not be a muscle injury, I was thinking please do not be a stress fracture.
So the next day I had to go to the podiatrist and found out it is the inner tendon that attaches from the arch of the foot up through the ankle and up the inner leg. It's job is to stabilize the ankle and when you roll your ankle it quickly acts to stop the movement. So this tendon was damaged, so the podiatrist strapped me up and said I could run as normal if there was no pain. So I ran 30min off the bike that day and no pain, then on Saturday ran for 1 hour off my 6 hour bike with 20 minutes at tempo and still no pain and then on Sunday I managed a 2 hour run, still no pain but I thought not to push my luck (which is hanging by a thread) and run any longer. So it seems as long as I am strapped up there is no problem. These tendons take 6-12 weeks apparently to return to normal so I may have to be strapped up for the race but that is OK, as long as I get to start and finish I am very happy.
So anyway back to the title of this blog. I discovered on my shoe a hole that I have never used in my life. Does anyone use this hole??? Anyway it seems this hole was put there especially for me with my wobbly ankles. If using this hole all of a sudden I feel very stable. Instead of me being aware that I am running with my foot in a shoe it feels like I am running bare foot with a glove on. I like it. The podiatrist even showed me a special way to do up my shoes using this hole, so it seems at 28 years old I have finally conquered the art of tying my shoelaces!!

Virus please go away

2009-09-15T06:57:00.000-07:00

It was most definitely the right decision as hard as it was to not race on Sunday as after the race started things got a lot worse. I really could do nothing but lie on my bed in agony and rush back and forth to the toilet. On Monday however I would have expected to be back to normal and was hoping to go cycling, however that was not to be. My whole body was aching and my head felt like it had been held in a vice. I was asking Brett to please kill me, and eventually I had to give in and take paracetamol (I hate taking pills). We took a trip to the supermarket to grab some more water and just by walking around for 5 minutes I felt completely exhausted. By 6pm however I felt much more alive and was able to eat something for the first time. Now it is the third day (Tuesday) and things are still not normal. I managed to run for 25 minutes before having to make a desperate pit stop, so perhaps I am not ready for food yet. I've eaten practically nothing in 3 days and I'm not even hungry!! So strange as I eat a lot for my size. If things continue like this I'll be back to my pre-athletic weight of 48kg in no time. That would be great if I wanted to race in the ITU but that's not a great weight for an ironman athlete, I really need to be at 52kg to give myself some added power on the bike. So if you are looking to lose a few pounds this is definitely the virus for you!!
We think it is norovirus. There have been many recent outbreaks here, even one at the Monona Terrace conference centre where the race is held. I did some stupid things in race week, like eat at buffet style places (at the hotel in Chicago for breakfast and at a salad bar on Thursday). Really not a good idea with everyone using the same tongs and breathing over the food and then you sit down to eat after dishing up and don't wash your hands. I was thinking about it and it is so strange that I never get sick in New Zealand but as soon as I leave I do. I was wondering why this is. Is it because we aren't used to the viruses on this side of the world but have adapted to our own? Or is it because in New Zealand I only use my eftpos card but when overseas I use cash for everything? Cash is pretty dirty when you think how many times it changes hands and there again you pay for your meal and then you eat without washing your hands. I think I will now turn into a obsessive compulsive person who continuously washes their hands after touching anything and carries hand sanatizer everywhere with them. I will be a recluse before the race and not go anywhere at all just do my training and stay in my room!! How fun, but at least that will mean this should never happen again!

Plan B

2009-09-13T05:43:00.000-07:00

The last 2 days I have had really bad stomach pains and have struggled to be able to eat any food. I have had 2 pretty sleepless nights trying to find a comfortable position but it wasn't until this morning (the day of the race) that I started vomiting. I never get stomach bugs and I never vomit. I usually have an iron stomach, but this was disgusting not only coming out my mouth but up through my nose as well!! All over my race clothes and in my hair. Anyway I thought well I should feel a bit better now that that is done so we went to the transition and got everything ready but the stomach pains were increasing, coming in waves of normal pain and then turning into doubling over kind of pain. I also have a fever and every time I had to go inside I was sweating and so hot. I tried a little jog and the stomach pains got worse and I knew that an ironman was out of the question so I had to make the devastating decision to not start in the race.
It was such a hard decision to make as I have trained really hard in Noosa and I feel like I am in the best form that I have been in all year. I love the course here, and I felt super fast on the bike course. I have been looking forward to this race for weeks and was so excited to race but I have learnt my lesson from Roth. If you are not well do not race (I don't want to end up in the medical tent again) and there was just no way that I would be able to complete the ironman today feeling weak, dizzy, feverish and not holding any nutrition down. Also having traveled to the other side of the world (which of course is expensive) makes this decision even harder but now I will just have to refocus on Kona.
Today really sucks but everything happens for a reason and there is really nothing I can do about it.

Jetlagged yet again

2009-09-09T02:28:00.000-07:00

The worst part about traveling the world and racing is most definitely the jet lag. Travelling from NZ to USA is particularly bad as USA is 7 hours ahead of NZ (but a day behind). This is the same as when I traveled from Europe to Korea, also 7 hours ahead and that was the time where I did not sleep at all for 5 days. I have a little more time to adjust this time though, so hopefully I will come right by Sunday. This was the first time I took jet lag pills. They are homeopathic but I can tell you they make no difference. When we finally got to Chicago I thought I was very tired but we could not sleep until about 3am and then we got up at 7am. We then drove 3 hours or so to Madison, Wisconsin and it was a huge battle to keep myself awake. After lunch I cycled for 1.5 hours on the bike course. It is a lot easier than I remember, the hills don't feel very steep this time. I like the course, undulating the whole way, but as I said not very steep. The road surface seems a lot rougher than I remember too, a lot of cracks and pot holes, I will have to make sure my bottles are attached really well as I can't afford to lose my Leppin nutrition after all the work we've done.
Then we had dinner at 4pm and I was so tired we went to sleep at around 6pm and then we woke up at around 2am. Actually if I can keep that routine it will be good as it may mean I actually get to sleep the night before the race!!
The weather seems nice here, very similar to Noosa and it should stay like that for the race. For those interested in following the race you can at www.ironman.com. The race starts at 7am Wisconsin time on the Sunday morning which will be midnight on Sunday night, so not such a good time but I hopefully will be onto the run by around 6.30am on Monday morning.

It's hot on the sunny coast!!

2009-08-29T18:39:00.001-07:00

My 5 week training stint here in Noosa is now into the last week. It has been very hot here, the hottest winter they have ever had and the temperatures are already into the thirties!!! I have been training very hard and I feel like I have made some good progress. There are so many great cycling routes up in the hinterland. I especially enjoy going down south along the coast for about 30km and then head inland. At first there are some very steep, sharp climbs where you feel that maybe you cannot get your bike up without rolling back down, your whole body aches to get up them, I think they are about 20% in gradient but luckily just very short. Once you get to a place called Palmwoods there is a really nice 10km climb up to Montville where the views are spectacular, you can see for miles!! Once up there you can travel either north to Mappleton or south to Maleny and yesterday I found a really nice quiet road called Mountain View road which provided just that, an amazing view out to the Glasshouse mountains.
My running has been going well too although I haven’t stepped foot in the national park for a week now, I have seen a lot of snakes and nearly stepped on one last time. It is quite funny because a lot of people have told me they run every day in the park and have never seen a snake in there and I am only here for a few weeks and have seen a snake somewhere nearly every day!! I think it’s because I always have my eyes peeled for them. So I have been doing a good mixture of beach runs, running along a path near the beach and a lot of tempo sessions on the treadmill.
When I am not training I have been busy reading lots of books. Being by myself there is not much else to do. So after exhausting my own supply from home I started on Luke and Amanda’s collection. First I read Michael Phelps’ book. I always knew he was an amazing athlete but it turns out he is a pretty special person as well, his goal in winning the 8 gold medals not really for his own personal gains but to really try and get the profile of swimming up in America and kids involved in swimming. I found it amazing that he could set time goals for himself and meet them down to the last hundredth of a second.
Then I started on Dean Karnzes’ book Ultramarathon man. What an amazing athlete Dean is. He started racing 100 mile races and so forth at the age of thirty but pretty soon he needed even more of a challenge, so he started running whole relay races of 199 miles (I think around 300km!!) by himself in order to raise awareness to certain children who needed organ donations. Dean’s main goal was also to get kids into sports with his charity Karno’s kids with the slogan ‘no child left inside’.
After reading Ultramarathon man I turned to his next book 50 marathons in 50 days which I am nearly finished and it has blown me away. As the title suggests he does 50 marathons in 50 different states in 50 consecutive days!! Not only does he race a marathon each morning, but he then sticks around at the expo for around 4-5 hours signing autographs etc and then hops in a bus and they drive for 5-7 hours to the next venue. No massages for Dean and he only gets to sleep 2-3 hours each night. During the experiment he has a blood test each morning which keeps track of his immune system etc to see what effect this is having on his body, in order to prove to the many people out there that will say that a venture such as this would be bad for his health. There were no changes, his body held up brilliantly. What an amazing athlete, I don’t think there would be many people in the world who could challenge themselves like Dean. It just proves that everybody is different, someone like Dean can push his body hard and recover so easily (he has never had an injury in his career) while others may do an Ironman and be unable to walk properly for a month. Everyone needs to find their own limits. His books have certainly not made me want to do endurance running events (I can’t think of anything worse than running continuously for that amount of time) but I have enjoyed reading about such an inspiring sportsman.

Enjoying swimming again

2009-08-12T19:44:00.001-07:00

It has been some time since I have enjoyed my swim training. But it is quite easy to enjoy swimming in Noosa, in the best swimming pool in the world; in my opinion anyway. I must admit I had gotten quite slack with my swim training in Europe. Swimming there is just unbearable with no lane ropes and crazy schedules where everyone must swim in 1 or 2 hours of the day, it is impossible to get a good workout there and so I found myself just not swimming and instead doing an extra bike or run session which is just so much more fun. My swim times never suffered in the races; I still came out near the lead but what I did notice was that my effort in the swim portion of the race was a heap greater than usual. Usually I could have a nice cruisy swim, do a good time and then hammer the bike as soon as I got on it. My last few races I felt my heart rate was way too high and I was trying way too hard to keep up with the pack, and hence it took me a while to recover at the beginning of the bike section.
So now that I have a great environment to swim in I am putting things right. The Noosa Aquatic Centre is amazing. I wish I had photos but my camera is back in NZ. There is a 50m pool and a 25m pool and I nearly always get a whole 50m lane to myself; once or twice I have even had the whole pool to myself!! The pool is an outside one and as the sun is always shining here, swimming is heaven. I actually look forward to the time of the day when I get to jump into the blue sparkling water and you get a suntan as a bonus. The pool is also heated to around 28 degrees so I can stay in forever if I want to, the other day I had to do a two hour session and I didn't get cold, where as nearly every other time I have swum outside (apart from in Hawaii) I have only made it to around 1km before I had to put my wetsuit on. Also unlike in Europe where everyone swims breaststroke with their heads out of the water, the people here actually know how to swim freestyle, and so if you do have someone in the lane with you it is not a problem as you're not catching them every second lap. And finally the pool has an organized timetable which you can pick up at the start of the week and then you know at each hour of the day how many lanes will be available. I love this!!! I can come to the pool at a time when I know there won't be half the pool booked out.
Next time I will tell you about what I have been up to on the bike.

Training on the Sunny Coast

2009-08-06T17:31:00.000-07:00

I've been here in Noosa for nearly a week now, and the training is really, really good. I am subletting an apartment from triathletes Luke McKenzie and Amanda Balding and I couldn't have asked for a better location, only 500m from the pool, the beach and from the Noosa National Park. I can walk everywhere and the hardest part of my training so far has been walking 1.5km to and from the supermarket, as I have to carry my BlueSeventy bag filled to the brim with food and water every few days (I really wish I didn't eat quite so much!!). I think I have been carrying about 22kg of stuff which is nearly half my body weight and it really, really hurts. I have to stop twice along the way to take my bag off my back!!
The weather here is perfect for training, about 22 or 23 degrees everyday and sunny, and the forcast for the next 15 days is the same. With all the training I have done this year in the rain and the cold (which of course toughens you mentally) I am so thankful to have some really good training weather now. The swimming pool is perfect and there is a lot of great running trails in the nearby Noosa National Park. Last year Brett and I did a 6 week camping holiday from the Gold Coast up to Cairns which was a sort of reconossaince visit so I could find the best training for future years and Noosa was the place that ticked all the boxes. So far I have found a couple of really good cycling routes but I need to find more; it is definitely necessary to chat to the locals to find out the best routes. Australia is different to New Zealand in that they don't have as many different roads, they seem to have main roads and no secondary roads as all the subdivisions are built with cul-de-sacs which don't allow a clear route through. When you do find a secondary road it is often not sealed, so you have to explore and find exactly which roads are sealed and which aren't (as on the map they all show as sealed) and that will take a long time, so definitely best to either visit the local bike shop or talk to the locals.
Noosa is a triathlon town. In November there is a massive triathlon that takes place (it was one of the first races I did back in 2005) and so there are a lot of fit people here. The local tri club has a list of group rides for every single day of the week that anyone can join in, unfortunately I can't do that as I am unable to train with anyone else. I'm far too competitive and can't stick to my limits when around other people, I learnt that early on and so that is the reason I train alone so I can follow my coaches programme, but if anyone else is interested in coming to train for a few weeks in Noosa that would be the way to go I think.
When I first arrived here it was really strange to be by myself. I have never really been alone before; always had either my parents, flat mates or Brett living with me, so at first I found it really creepy being so silent, but I have gotten used to it over the last few days and I can really feel that the consistent training here in one place is really helping me and hopefully it will pay off at Ironman Wisconsin.

New Partnership with Leppin

2009-08-04T01:46:00.001-07:00

I will blog soon about my training in Noosa but right now I wanted to tell you all about my new partnership with Leppin.
I have been looking for a good nutrition sponsor for a while to complement Em's Power Cookies and Bars. I have felt for a while that I was racing somewhat under pa even though I was winning many races last summer. I often experience low energy levels when I race, particularly near the end of the bike section and my experiments with making my own products were not going too well. When I raced Ironman Western Australia last year my own gel mix was inadequate and I ran the whole marathon while seeing black and white squares. Things also were not good at Challenge Wanaka on the run, but as I was able to still win both these races I didn't do anything about it. After my bad experience at Roth I decided it was time to call in the experts and I was very fortunate that Leppin wanted to sponsor me. Not only am I now receiving some great products but I have received a great deal of really good advice courtesy of Matt Tuck (managing director and also very good athlete). I feel like I have learnt more about nutrition in the last week than I have in the last few years.
So I will now be using Leppin gel products, Leppin Enduro Booster, and Leppin Endurance Athlete. The biggest difference I have noticed so far is from the Leppin Endurance Athlete. This is a recovery formula to take after sessions. It has 30g of protein in a serve and boy have I noticed a difference. I'm into the hard training sessions now and I am not sore at all!! I have never used a recovery formula or protein powder before and I think it is going to make a really big difference in my training, and it is yummy!! I have been using the vanilla creme flavour mixed in a smoothie with milk and bananas and it is a real treat for a post-training snack.
Remember to check out their other products at www.leppinsport.com

It's nearly time to pack the bike again.....

2009-07-29T14:26:00.000-07:00

I couldn't have planned for better weather. It has been beautiful here, no rain at all and quite warm. It really feels like spring not winter. I have been able to do some really good training sessions this week. I feel great, really fresh, if Roth could have been just a couple of weeks later!! But of course there is no point in dwelling on that. Everything happens for a reason in life, and I now find myself in a position I have never been in before. I am starting a training block fresh, not recovering from an ironman and not coming from poor fitness. It is quite exciting to be in this situation, can I push myself to a new level?? We will see.
So I only have a few more days here unfortunately and then I am leaving for Noosa, Australia for a 5 week training block. The way the weather has been lately there doesn't seem much point to going to Australia, but of course that could change without warning!! I am traveling alone this time. It will get lonely, but at the same time it allows me to really focus on my training, and not much else. When traveling with Brett we have a lot of fun, do a lot more sightseeing, and it is easy to be distracted, and then when I am home I feel compelled to work, which means late nights every night which when combined with 30 hours training can get quite tiring.
I have worked nearly every night since being back, I definitely enjoy the change of scenery but it is time now to knuckle down and focus on my training. Last week we played for a play "A Midsummer Nights Dream", written by Shakespeare. I hated this play at school, but now that I am a lot older I actually could understand it and it was really funny. This week we are playing for a silent film. I hope the film is good because the music by itself is not that rewarding to play, but I am sure that it will all come together on Saturday night. Unfortunately I did something a bit stupid by putting myself on the 6am flight on Sunday, which doesn't sound that bad, but when you consider that you need to be there at 4am, which means leaving my house at 3am, and that I will only get home from the concert on Saturday night at around mid-night then it wasn't quite the best plan I've ever had!!

Getting back into it

2009-07-24T22:03:00.000-07:00

Well after a fantastic days training I am finally having much more positive feelings and that is just as well as re-reading my last blog it was quite grim. I'd like to thank all the lovely people that have sent me messages telling me about their own experiences with various heart conditions and how they dealt with them and continued successfully in the sport of ironman. It has all helped me to put things into perspective and I am now feeling much more positively about my own future in the sport. Life is there for living, and there is no point in not living because you are scared of what the consequences could be.
So today I had my first really good days training in weeks. In mid June I caught some kind of flu virus and for the first week I could do nothing at all. Even walking 200m to the shop across the road I found utterly exhausting. The symptoms cleared up after that week and I could finally train again but the last few weeks have been pretty strange. As soon as I started training again I had sweat just pouring out of me, particularly my face which was strange as usually I sweat very little and the temperatures where I was training in the mountains ranged from around 12 to 18 degrees. I had so much sweat however that I could not train without carrying a face cloth with me. It was really funny as I had to keep stopping and wipe my face and I kept thinking how did I ever bike before without a face cloth.
The other weird thing about my training was that absolutely everything felt like I was going up-hill. I would go for a run, and usually I find running quite easy, certainly the easiest part of my training, and I would be struggling so I would think that it must be a false flat, but when I turned around to come back "down" it was still up-hill. At first I thought this must be something to do with the altitude which was only 600-700m but when I got to Roth at 300m altitude and was running along the canal both ways were up-hill.
So when I got back from Europe even though I hadn't been able to finish the race at Roth and do the run section I had to take some more time off from my training and I started doing a few hours training a day the last few days and I still didn't feel that flash, but it was just that feeling you have when you start training again and you don't feel that fit. But today I did 4 hours on the bike and a 3/4 hour run and I felt great so I think I am finally back on track and I am looking forward to a good few weeks training ahead.

Ignorance is Bliss ....

2009-07-22T13:54:00.000-07:00

On Monday I went to the Doctor's to get to the bottom of what happened to me at Roth. There are so many variables it really is impossible to say for sure but it is likely to be either related to the virus I had a couple of weeks before which I thought I was over, all else related to the amount of caffeine I had at the end of the bike ride. This sounds a bit strange but I don't have caffeine in every day life and usually have caffeine in a race only in drink on the run. I had 4 caffeinated gels at the end of the bike and this may have led to the hyperventilation and the fainting was secondary. So it is not solved but I will certainly be looking into what I eat and drink on the bike and will not be taking caffeinated gels again.
So while I was there the Doctor decided to do some tests to just make sure there was nothing wrong. So I did the usual blood tests and then the doctor listened to my heart. He heard a murmur so I got sent to the heart clinic for some tests and unfortuntately they discovered I have a bicuspid aortic valve, which means my aortic valve is divided into 2 sections rather than 3. I want to make this clear. This has been with me since before I was born (the heart is formed in the first trimester of pregnancy) and is not something that has happened over time, or from me competing in ironman races. It is also in no way connected to what happened to me at Roth. Of course this has come as a shock to me. I really, really wish I did not find out about this. Had I never have raced in Roth I would never have been tested and would still not know about this. I am grateful that I was able to live 28 years of my life without knowing about this, as I can safely say that if this had been known when I was a child I would never have been pushed into sport and certainly would never have achieved what I have today. I would have thought that something such as an ironman would have been an impossible task.
The doctor has told me I can train and compete as usual. My heart is fine (for now anyway) and it shouldn't hold me back. I will have to change the way I train and race though. If I am sick with a cold or flu I will not be able to train or race and I will have to be much more flexible with my race schedule. I have always been a planner, planning races months or even a year in advance. Now I will have to pull out of races if I am not 100%, or if I am not in good health within a month or so from a race I won't be in the shape to be able to do it. I can't see myself or the race organisers enjoying this!!
The Doctor seems to think it is great that we found this out. I couldn't disagree more. For an ironman athlete I think there are 2 things you want to have when you line up for a race. One is a strong heart and the other is a strong head. Now I will have neither. I can never toe the start line again knowing that I am in perfect condition to get through the race. I now view myself in a different light. I always thought of myself as a strong and fit person and now I view myself as an invalid. Hopefully this will change with time as I get used to the idea. I really would have preferred to have not known about this. I feel like my freedom to live my life as I choose has been taken away from me.
This is what I have learnt about bicuspid aortic valve so far. It effects about 1% of the general population although it is 4 times more likely in males than females (so I guess only 0.2% of females). Of those, one third will have serious complications usually in their 40's or 50's (about a decade before those with normal hearts). Most people never find out about this condition (and I wish I was one of them). A few weeks ago Torbjorn Sindballe had to retire from Ironman because of this exact condition. Sindballe had a long and successful triathlon career but his condition had reached a much more serious stage. He had a leak (which is much more likely to happen with this type of valve than a normal one) and therefore it was necessary to stop competing. There is not much research on the effects of excercise on these types of valves that I can find. Certainly not of an endurance sport such as ironman. Most of the studies say it has to be decided on a case by case basis. So it is impossible to say if Sindballe's heart was made worse with the effects of ironman or if his heart would have done this in his 30's if he never did ironman.
So anyway I am still trying to get my head around it all. I am not sure what this will mean for me as yet. I aim to race Ironman Wisconsin in September. I can not make any decision about Hawaii right now. I now have to be flexible!! But I have decided that racing Ironman Wisconsin is the right decision for me. There is not much point me trying to race the World Championships straight up after finding out this news as it being the most competitive of races, I would have to be in peak form both physically and mentally and of course it is raced in the toughest of conditions. If I can get through a normal ironman successufully then I will regain my confidence.

A few things I've learnt....

2009-07-19T16:26:00.000-07:00

So far I am not nearly as cold as I supposed I would be being back here in Oxford although this morning there was a heavy frost which even led to ice appearing on the inside of our windows. Winter is one thing I don’t miss when I am away from New Zealand but it is definitely good to be back home if only for 2 weeks. Today I will have some blood tests done as well as speak to a sport’s doctor so hopefully that will shed some light for me about exactly what occurred last weekend. Of course I have been going though my head all the possible scenarios, but it seems I did so many things wrong that day that it is impossible for me to decipher. I know I drank too little, but not any less than usual. I find it tricky to drink in cold conditions; in the heat I am fine. I drank 2 bottles of water. I think maybe it was the lack of electrolytes so I am planning on using a sports drink in my next race. I know this seems pretty obvious but I have stayed clear of the sports drinks as I wish to keep my mouth filling free and if I used sports drinks in the race then I would have to practise in training and all that sugar on my teeth is something I wanted to avoid, but I will use one time per week on my long bike rides and I suppose I can bring my tooth bush with me!! I think this may also help with the amount of high and lows of energy levels I experience during a race. Perhaps with a constant stream of carbohydrates, calories and electrolytes coming in rather than food every half hour this may help to solve that.
The other thing I am wondering about is caffeine. I never drink coffee or use caffeine outside of the race. Usually during a race I use a small amount of caffeine in coke or red bull or occasionally in my gels. In Roth I had 4 caffeine gels all in quick succession at the end of the bike ride. I had therefore 200mg of caffeine in about 1.5 hours. I am not used to this amount of caffeine but I didn’t really think about it, those were the gels I had available to me on that day and I didn’t actually read the amount of caffeine on the gel packets. I felt my head getting confused and I started getting light headed and then 5km from the end I couldn’t breath and started to hyperventilate. I read yesterday that too much caffeine can lead to breathing problems. So maybe I couldn’t breathe because of the caffeine and the hyperventilating then led to me feeling faint and then not being able to move any part of my body and it was nothing to do with dehydration or lack of salt at all. I don’t know?? I am clutching at straws. I am hoping the doctor will tell me exactly what I did wrong and then it will never happen again.
So although that race at Roth was a really awful way to end my trip I am happy in a way that it happened as will hopefully teach me a lesson and help me improve in my future races. I have also learnt a few things about myself in that 2 month trip to Europe and here are the main ones.

• I don’t like being away from home for such a long time. In the future I will do shorter trips. It is not so bad if I travel alone as I know the dogs are happy and well looked after. But I always feel guilty if both Brett and I travel as now Raro is quite fat and Lilly was very unhappy when we were away and was being very naughty.
• Doing a lot of half distance races is not good for me as it is really disruptive to my training. Each time I race it means very bad sleep for 3 days and a bad diet filled of lots of carbohydrates that leaves me feeling unhealthy and gluggy. I felt so bad after coming home that my body has wanted nothing other than fruits and vegetables and certainly no more bread or pasta!!! So I am much better to just train consistently for an ironman event than to do a whole series of races over 3 or 4 weeks in a build up to the event.
• Doing a whole lot of half iron distance events is also not good for me as it leads to me thinking that an ironman distance is a very long and hard task. My body seems to improve with each iron distance race and each one feels easier and less of a challenge in distance. This is what I found doing Hawaii, Western Australia, Wanaka and Taupo all in succession. Hawaii was the hardest and they all got gradually easier until Taupo.
• Don’t listen to all the people who critisize you and tell you that you are doing the wrong thing. Everyone is different which is what some people can’t understand. I am not conventional and never will be. But my race schedule of 5 iron distance races spread out evenly over the year has been good for me as an athlete. Trying to follow a more conventional approach has not been good for me at all. I am happy that there are many other athletes like me that I can look up to, the main one being Bella Bayliss who is tremendously successful, and has been following her plan for many, many years. She does many more iron distance races a year than me and very successfully. Last year she won 5 iron distance events and beat me in Hawaii.

DNF in Roth

2009-07-14T20:40:00.000-07:00

I am now halfway home, in transit at LAX. I am looking forward to getting home after being away for over 2 months.
The life of an athlete I now realise is filled with ups and downs. After 2 years of pretty good ironman experiences I had a really horrible day in the weekend in Roth. I collapsed after the bike ride and could not finish. I was feeling bad for the last 40km or so and then the last 5 km I could not breath. I came off the bike and my body just collapsed. I could not move anything, not even my eyes, could not talk, and could not breath. I was taken away and I thought I was out for about 5 minutes but it was 2-3 hours. This has never happened before even after the run let alone after the bike and the worst part is I have no idea why it occurred. Was it lack of water, salt or something more??
I am feeling pretty low in confidence right now and I really feel I need to finish an ironman before going to Hawaii. So my goal at this moment is to prepare to go back to Ironman Wisconsin in September, the place where I had my first ironman win in 2007.

What a weekend of sport

2009-07-03T08:28:00.000-07:00

The last week has gone very well here in Switzerland and now I am feeling much fitter and stronger than when I arrived. Now the hard work is done and the taper begins. We leave tomorrow for Germany but before we go to Roth we are going to go to Frankfurt to watch Ironman Germany. This will be my first time to watch an ironman and I am very excited to see the stars such as Macca, Eneko Llanos, Yvonne Van Vlerken and of course Kiwi Terenzo Bozzone. I am hoping I can learn a thing or two by watching these people and pump myself up for my race.
Also I will be busy watching the tennis finals and the start of the tour de France so I am in sports heaven right now.

Beautiful Switzerland

2009-06-28T09:54:00.000-07:00

The 7 hour drive to Switzerland last Thursday was amazing. We travelled along the French and Italian coast until just before Genoa in Italy passing through too many tunnels to count. We then went inland passing near Milan to the Swiss border and we then went through a tunnel that was 16km long!! Then to get to Interlaken we had to go over a mountain. As we were going up I desperately wanted to get out my bike. There weren’t that many cars and I saw a few cyclists making their way up the hill. At the top we were at around 2200m and there were huge piles of snow on the sides of the road.

My friend Helene has been very generous in enabling us to stay at her Father’s holiday house. We are in a small village of Kien close to Thun and Interlaken. I love walking around and looking at everyone’s houses. They are immaculate and so well cared for. Some of them are hand-carved and are so beautiful.

It is such a great place to stay. There is a 50m pool nearby which compared to being in France is a haven. There are not nearly as many people and there is even music underneath the water!! Brett was enjoying that; he wasn’t doing that much swim training!!! Unfortunately just as I was finishing up the heavens opened. I have never felt rain so icy before. That is the down-side of being in the mountains. The weather is so changeable. You have to be prepared for anything when you go out cycling. This certainly helps with the mental side of doing an ironman. There is probably nobody in the world that hates rain more than me, but I find that if I have to push through this type of weather in training, then the race is not nearly as daunting.
On Saturday I had a long bike ride to do and so I decided to try to negotiate my way as best as I could around the course of the legendary Inferno Triathlon. It is tough!! I got on my bike and headed straight up-hill for about an hour, no chance for a warm-up!! After about 70k I was preparing for a climb up to 1900m but I think I went the wrong way because the bike path turned into gravel and I wasn’t going to take the Ceepo off-road. I did however see another cyclist with carbon race wheels go up; the Swiss are crazy I think. So instead I found another climb on a normal road, and then to finish up I did a few hard reps along the lake front. That being the first time I have biked on the flat in weeks, and I found that I am feeling a lot stronger now than when I first came to Europe.

Then on Sunday the sun finally came out and the clouds disappeared. We could see the tops of the mountains and that is where we were headed. We had a 2.5 hour run to do. We started at 1100m and we only had to climb up to 1500m to a lake, so I said to Brett that it won’t be very steep as I thought it would take over an hour to get there but boy was I wrong. It went straight up and I felt like I was running on the spot and Brett looked like he might have a heart attack; it reminded me of Baldwin St in Dunedin.

Gourdon: My favourite French Village

2009-06-23T12:28:00.000-07:00

Everyday we travel up to Gourdon to start cycling because it starts to get quiet there and because it is such a cute little village. It is perched on top of a cliff, and the views are amazing.

The actual village only consists of a couple of streets inside the walls and cliffs.

I love cycling up in the mountains as it seems like the roads are built for cycling. Hardly any cars but lots of cyclists. Just like it should be!! Today I was doing some big gear hill reps. Everytime I passed someone I would say Bonjour which I learnt is bad as then they try to have a chat to you in French, but the only words I know are Bonjour, Merci, and since Challenge France the word for water (L'eau).

I am also enjoying being able to swim in a pool with lane ropes, this is a rarity in Europe. Yesterday I was able to have the best swim I have had in a long time. The day before that though I was having a great swim, was up to 1800m but then got told to get out. It seemed the pool was to close at 3pm. I was so dissappointed. The pool is also funny as instead of having lanes for fast, medium and slow they have funny signs which I have learnt are a lane for people using flippers, a lane for those with paddles, a lane for those doing backstroke etc. If you get in the wrong lane and start swimming with paddles they will get very angry at you even if you are the only person in the lane. I have not worked out what you are to do if you wish to swim backstroke whilst using paddles and flippers.

Exploring the French Alps

2009-06-21T12:16:00.000-07:00

I have been in Antibes since my return from Korea. Although I am no longer racing Ironman France it is fantastic to train on the course. Lots of climbing which I love and the descents aren't nearly as scary as I anticipated. I have now done the whole course and am now looking forward to exploring higher mountains further afield. The last week has not been the best with quite a bad cold which meant I couldn't do nearly as much training as I wanted. But now I am ready this coming week to push myself hard and hopefully I haven't lost too much fitness.
Here are a few photos from the last few days.
Below is down along the Antibes waterfront. So many expensive boats!!!

And the following photos are from the area where I have been cycling. It is really busy to cycle down in Antibes but once away in the mountains it is amazing cycling. Hardly any traffic. I really love being up in the mountains exploring and it is great to run up there too. A little bit of altitude to make the sessions a little bit harder.

2nd in Korea

2009-06-15T22:24:00.000-07:00

Although this race was tough I am very glad I took up the opportunity and raced in Korea. I had so much fun traveling for the first time with other athletes and seeing a part of the world that I have never been to before. We had a very, very tight schedule and traveled a lot in the bus staying at a different hotel every night!! I had bought my camera and was determined to take some photos but in the end I only got 2 and both are from me sitting in the bus!!
I arrived in Korea on the Thursday afternoon before the race. The trip was only 10 hours but I really struggled with the time zone difference. Korea is 7 hours ahead of France and I found this very difficult to adjust to. In fact I never did. I slept well the first night as I did not sleep on the plane but the other 2 nights before the race I just lay there all night unable to sleep. The race would start at 7am which was mid night in France and so I was just beginning to drift off when my alarm went off at 4.30am. So I was exhausted before the race started, but was looking forward to a tough day with a course so different to what I have done before.
The race consisted of a 3km ocean swim in beautifully clear water, an 80km bike all up hill to 1300m with 2 big climbs, and then a 20km run mostly off road in a forest. When the gun went off and we started swimming I knew immediately that I did not quite feel my normal self. I had no chance of being able to sprint at the beginning of the swim and so was really quite happy when I came out with Tereza Macel who is known to be a very strong swimmer. That was the last I was to see of her all day however. She had a fantastic day and went on to win comprehensively.
The first part of the bike was through the town and it was quite techinical with speed bumps perhaps every 200m. I really like to be able to practise a course like this, but we only were able to unpack our bikes the afternoon before and that part of the course had been too busy to ride. It wasn't until 14km where the road opened up and I could start to focus. I imagine I lost quite a bit of time during this section. The course then became undulating and began to climb steadily at around the 40km mark I think. Again I felt very tired on the bike, I usually love climbing hills and feeling the lactic acid in my legs and pushing through it, but not on this day I could only go a steady pace. During the first climb I had some issues with my chain falling off. The day before the chain had fallen off too but I had no time to have anyone look at it and I assumed it was fine. Now that I am home (in France) Brett has told me that the front derailer was knocked in the flight and that is the reason. So anyway my chain fell off going up the hill and so I had to get off and put it back on but it jammed up and it took a couple of minutes. After that I was a bit scared to change gears as I didn't want it to happen again so I just rode in the small chain ring. The first climb ended at around 60km in the town of Taebaek at around 600m altitude and then was quite flat for a while. It was cold and rainy up there. After that we had one last climb to the top which was quite difficult as my legs were cold and my toes were completely numb. At the top it was really foggy and you couldn't see much in front of you. I came off the bike in 2nd place but I could see I was quite a way back from Tereza.
The first part of the run was on the road going back and forth a few times. This was good as you got an opportunity to see the gaps from your competition. I estimated I was 2km behind Tereza (about 8 or 9 minutes) and that the group of girls behind me were also about the same distance behind. After that first 8 or 9 km we turned to run on off-road tracks in the forest. I was enjoying running but soon I came to an intersection with no markings. There was no one around me so I had to make a decision and choose a path. I had this horrible feeling in my stomach as I was so scared I made the wrong choice, but soon I saw an aid station and was so relieved. Then again I came to another intersection this one had an arrow that said 2.5km and then some writing in Korean. I thought that must be related to the course and followed it. I again had a horrible feeling but again was relieved when I saw the aid station (and it was about 2.5km from the sign I had seen). So I then thought to myself the arrows are telling you the direction and how far from the aid station, so when I saw the next one that said 300m I had no reservations about going down the hill. I ran down for a while, but no aid station, and then I saw Bevan McKinnon (felllow Kiwi) and he told me that it wasn't the right way. He had gone down for about 5 minutes. So I turned around and ran back up the hill. I was very lucky to come accross Bevan or I would have kept going and lost many places. I felt very bad for him though as he wasn't so lucky and that really ruined his race.
So then I had no idea if I was still in 2nd, I presummed I wasn't as I maybe had run an extra km. I ran to the end and found that yes I still was in 2nd position, VERY LUCKY!!!
We traveled back to Incheon after the race in the bus (about 4 or 5 hours) and I flew out the next day. My muscles are very well recovered from the race and I am not sore at all but my body has taken a beating and is very run down and tired. I am now sick with a cold. So I have had to make some adjustments to my schedule. With Ironman France in only 10 days I feel I can not possibly get my body in the condition to give a successful ironman performance, and then with Challenge Roth just 2 weeks later I will have to give two below-par performances. I don't want to do that so I have opted to pull out of the France race, therefore allowing myself to rest and recover from this cold and then hopefully put some solid training in for Roth and aim to give one good performance. I am still here in France though training on the course for the next week.
Below are some photos from the trip. The first is one of the ones I took on the bus. The photo doesn't give the view justice though. So beautiful, trees and hills as far as the eye can see.

The next photos are taken by Kiwi triathlete Andrew McKay. Thanks Andrew for the photos!!
This one is the transition 2 zone. As you can see it was foggy!!

Here I am at the awards ceremony with Tereza Macel the winner and room mate for the week Kiwi Erin O'Hara.

And finally the champagne with the men's podium including race winner Kiwi Kieran Doe who put on a dominating performance.

3rd at Challenge France

2009-06-07T07:38:00.000-07:00

My aim was to be on the podium and I achieved that and I made a big improvement on my half distance race from 2 weeks ago so I guess I should be happy with my race but I'm not as I made some very stupid mistakes. In the end I lost out on second place by 4 seconds and when I think back and see that I wasted more than a minute in those 2 transitions then it gets a little sore. I spend hours each week practicing my 3 skills but I have overlooked the 4th skill of transitions, so of course I will now need to look into that. It is not often that in the sport of ironman that transitions really matter that much, but yesterday in the half distance it did.
The day did not begin badly, I had a fantastic swim coming out with the lead pack which included Lucie Zelonkova (perhaps the best swimmer in ironman at this moment). The day was cold and rainy and some people must think that I specialise in this type of race now and that maybe I enjoy the rain as it seems that nearly everywhere I go there is dismal weather. I do not but I have grown used to it and even to expect it. I had swum the day before and so I knew the lake to be freezing, so for the first time ever I did no swim warm-up. The start was a novel idea. A fireman's hose was sprayed along the start line as we lined up in the water. This certainly worked to keep us behind the line!!! So when I came out of the water I was very happy and ran to transition. I then put some insulating newspaper down my top and tried to put my arm-warmers on. Everyone was already gone as I struggled with getting the material over my wet hands. I wasted maybe 30 seconds then ran to my bike to find it on the ground. This really came as no surprise as the racks were shoddy. When we had checked our bikes in the day before I found the bike racks were 2 pieces of number 8 fencing wire, about 2 mm horizontal to the ground. It doesn't take a genius to work out that a bike can not be held like that. I looked around and saw bikes everywhere propped up with rocks and sticks. I took off my front wheel and balanced my bike between 2 big rocks. The next day the racks were vertical (they had had to take out all bikes and turn all the racks around), this was quite a bit better (I could now balance my bike with my front wheel on) however my 2 rocks were gone, and the racks were just not strong enough to hold bikes once people started grabbing them quickly.
So anyway my bike was knocked off which wasn't really a problem but what I didn't realise was that my gel flask containing all my calories (I was carrying only water in my drink bottles) was also gone, if I had known this I would have searched for it wasting a few further seconds as a race without adequate nutrition believe me is not much fun!!
So by the time I got on my bike instead of being with Lucie I was at least 30 or 40 seconds behind her. The first part was flat so I wasn't going to make up much time there, at around 20km the course became more undulating and I could see her ahead. Every time I went up I gained massively and every time I went down I lost. The roads were slippery and I wasn't willing to take any risks and the course was very technical. At 30km there was an aid station and I planned to pick up a few things. I usually am self sufficient on the bike but today I was at the mercy of the volunteers. Usually when we race the volunteers will run to pass you a bottle or a gel, but these volunteers had not been trained to do this, they just held out their hand, so I slowed to nearly a stop to try and grab a gel but the volunteer stepped backwards so I missed it. I think maybe they expected me to come to a complete stop but I didn't want to do that. Looking back now I should have just stopped and filled up my pockets with gels (and that was a big mistake I made). After missing the gel I tried to grab anything, bananas, drink, bars but I missed it all. I looked at Lucie up the road and I saw she had gained at least another 20 seconds on me again, and I was annoyed as I had planned to make my move just after the aid station as we were about to head up one of the few longer climbs of the course (still only 1km or so). Now I was too far back, I came close but not close enough. So I had to pass later on the down-hill at around 40km into the race and then the rest of the course after that was not hilly enough for me to take any advantage out of her and she stayed right behind me for the next 30km or so.
At 60km was the second aid station. Again the volunteers did not run, I grabbed at anything and I got 1 gel. I was relieved but it was not enough and I felt myself losing a lot of energy. At 70km Lucie passed me and put about 1 minute into me in that last 20km, I did not feel good at all.
So I arrived into the second transition and took my transition bag. This transition was at a different site to the first transition and our bags had been handed in the day before and then placed by the volunteers. My bag now had a double knot which I could not undo (and I still can not undo). It is unnecessary to tie a knot in the bag as you would have to hold the bag upside down and shake vigorously for anything to fall out, and obviously we want to get our things out quickly in the transition. So I tried to undo this but was unable, so tore it with my hands, put my things on, and then had to squeeze my helmet back into my bag through the hole. Believe me this took a lot longer than I had planned and I have got to say I lost my cool at this point and started swearing. I have managed to keep my cool when racing for the last 2 years but not on this day. When I first started racing I used to let little things get to me until I met a man in Switzerland who told me about Roger Federer (one of my ultimate sporting idols). He told me that when Federer was young he used to lose his cool over small things and he would go on to lose the match, as he matured however he became cool, calm and collected and the rest is history, he is the best tennis player and his ability to cope under pressure is astounding. When you stay calm and collected you don't waste your energy and you focus on the task at hand, well I lost far too much energy at this point in the race and of course I am disappointed in myself.
So now I was at least 1.30 sec down on Lucie. There was no aid station in transition so I ran to the first transition at 2k and it was only a water station. Rebekah Keat came by me at that point and was going too fast for me. I was not feeling good, I needed something to eat. I ran up the hill to the next aid station at 5k and found some gels on the table and shoved as many as I could into my pockets. I did not feel good that first lap, we ran down hill for 5km and I got a bad stitch just as Lucie came into sight, so I had to wait until I could recover. I gradually felt energy coming back into me as I took on more gels but now the problem was to get water. I did not learn the French word for water. Looking back now, what was I thinking?? Of course the volunteers would not understand English with only a handful of English speaking people in the race. When racing in Germany I have always spoken German but I have found speaking French here impossible and so had given up. Every time I have tried to speak French people have stared at me with a confused and angry look, so I have kept my mouth well and truly shut for the last 2 weeks. So every time at the aid station I missed out on water as I could not work out what was in the different cups (I didn't want sports drink) and when I said water they tried to give me bananas. So in the end I just went for the coke as I know the French word.
So anyway I ended up catching Lucie on the 2nd lap of the 5k climb (at around 14 km)and after that point I felt quite good. Rebekah was already at least 4 minutes in front by that time so I decided to save my legs for next week. Another bad mistake on my part. I often race like that in order to do more races but I underestimated my competition coming from behind. At 19 or 20km I was caught by the very fast runner from France, she is the smallest adult I have ever seen in my life, weighing in at just 42kg (10kg lighter than me). We were going down hill, I picked up the pace radically but I simply couldn't go down hill any faster. She bet me by 4 seconds and she deserved it as I simply made too many mistakes yesterday and she raced well. I will meet her again in 3 weeks at Ironman France and I will not hold back on the run.
I will now be racing next weekend at the ITU Asian long distance championships in Korea. This of course was an unplanned trip but the event is giving a great package to professional athletes with all our costs covered in order to have us compete there and I would like to support an event which is helping the professionalism of our sport. The prize money offered is about 1.5 times an ironman event with around $70 000 US dollars up for grabs. The event looks well organised and the course looks challenging and adventurous with a 3km ocean swim, an 80km bike all uphill, and a 20km run at 1200m altitude. I hope that I will be able to take some of the things I have learnt from racing this week and put it into practice hopefully with a better result.

Challenge France this weekend.

2009-06-05T08:24:00.000-07:00

Challenge France will be raced this Sunday 7th of June, starting from 11am European time, which is 9pm for those back home in NZ. Live coverage of the race will be available on www.triathlon-live.info
This I think will be in French, but you can use google translate www.translate.google.com to help translate into English.

Learning to Rest

2009-06-04T11:32:00.000-07:00

This week I have had the opportunity to have a little look at how a World Champion Ironman athlete trains. Chris McCormack has been training here also for the past week and it has been a really eye opening experience and I have learnt a thing or two from him.
Last year I had the opportunity to see how New Zealand Ironman athlete Cameron Brown trains when I was based at the Tri NZ base in France. I found we were very similar. We are both work-horses and very, very focused. Macca trains somewhat differently. He has an incredible natural talent and also of course a big base of many years training behind him, but I was quite amazed at how much less training he does than me. Instead what I found out from him is the importance of rest in one's training. Something I am not at all good at. My idea of resting in my down time is a walk or chores where as he builds rest into his training routine resting after each session. I on the other hand have always done all my training sessions straight after the other. For example, a hard run after doing 3 hours cycling and a swim and I have always reasoned that my body needs to learn to run when it is tired, as this imitates the race situation. I think maybe a combination is good. Doing some running on tired muscles, but some crucial, speed sessions when you are fresh.
I have never, ever had a nap in the day-time before. I have always known that many athletes do, but I have always seen that as a sign of weakness, a sign that the training is too much for them. I didn't know there was some scientific reasoning behind it. Apparently when you sleep the first 3 hours are when the body recovers itself with human growth hormone, after those 3 hours the mind gets rest. So a nap, plus a normal sleep is far better for recovery than just a normal nights sleep, especially if you can nap straight after a hard workout and recover your muscles straight away.
So this week I have tried to have naps. It is not easy!!! and it will I think take me a while to get used to. Macca sleeps straight after going swimming. I can not do that, swimming sessions do not take that much out of me and I find it impossible to sleep, however I have been able to nap after a hard cycling or run session and he is right!!! Just a small nap of 30-40 minutes after those sessions has left my muscles feeling pretty fresh and that is after two hard weeks, and I have also felt that I have got more out of my afternoon sessions. Of course it means that training takes all day long instead of just the morning and early afternoon, but there is not too much that is to be done here in France, it may be a different story when I get back home ;)

Happy Birthday Brett!!

2009-06-01T09:53:00.000-07:00

On Sunday was Brett's 31st birthday. Had we been at home he would have been able to celebrate in the snow with Oxford getting a good couple of inches, but instead he got to join in for parts of my 3 hour run session.
In the evening we decided to go out for dinner, but the only problem was we were ravenous at 5pm and it was Pizza that we wanted. So we went into town and walked around looking for something to eat, but dinner was not being served. So we decided we would start with desert as there seemed to be plenty of that around. I had my little French dictionary and it took about 30 minutes until we were ready to order!! I had a banana split which happened to be banana split in French and Brett some fancy Sundae, and we ordered some non alcoholic cocktails. They cost 6 euro each and I was sure that mine was supposed to have oranges, pineapples, mangoes, and 2 scoops of banana ice cream but all I could taste was orange juice :(

We walked through town for a while. It's nice to be able to walk around in the evening again, and it doesn't get dark until after 9pm.

Then we went home for frozen pizza and then the highlight Brett's cake. Usually I bake Brett a cake but this time we had a French style one. I can't remember what it was called but it was like a creme puff but with custard.

Photos from Alsace

2009-05-30T10:18:00.000-07:00

Today I had my favourite session of the week, which is a long bike ride, today of 5 hours followed by a 1 hour run off the bike. Brett was able to take a few photos.
The bike course is a challenging one. It is undulating throughout with no big climbs but also nowhere for one to really relax. I like this type of course. It is quite similar in terrain to Wanaka (but without the views) and even in some parts the road is a little rough like Wanaka. Not the typical fast European course, and it won't be a fast race day, but this is what I prefer. The course is beautiful with a lot of it taking place in the forested areas.

You can run forever in the forest tracks here. I like the part where the race course takes place but today we explored elsewhere. It is easy to get lost though as the tracks keep branching off.

Afterwards we returned to our little chalet. At the moment we have the whole chalet to ourselves but in a few days we will be sharing with a fellow competitor. That is going to be a new challenge for me!! To be living with my competition!!!

And this is the beautiful view from the chalets towards the nearest village of Oberbronn, which is 5k from Niederbronn-Les Bains.

Niederbronn

2009-05-27T09:42:00.000-07:00

On Monday we left Austria for France. However, we stopped in to see my Home stay family in Schwabach, Germany (near Roth). It was great to see them again and also to bike for 2.5 hours on the Roth cycling course. What a difference from last year when it was a raining hard and 10 degrees. This time it was the hottest day of the year and around 35 degrees. I loved it. On Tuesday we made it to Niederbronn-Les Bains where we are staying until the Challenge France race. It is such a good training environment. On Tuesday Brett and I ran for 1.5 hours on the run course. It is fantastic, up there as my favourite run course along with Challenge Wanaka. It is quite hilly and a lot of it is off road in a forest. Then early this morning the race organizer of Challenge France (Guy Hemmerlin)let us into the swimming pool here out of hours. We had the whole pool to ourselves (that is me, Chris McCormack and his training partner, Michael Murphy). It was the best swim session I have had in a long, long time. Then I went cycling on the course for 5 hours. I love cycling in France. There are so many quiet roads and even when you pass through the quaint French villages it is pretty much deserted. The course is not as hilly as I expected. The first 20 km or so is pretty flat through forested areas with no traffic and then you travel through many villages with some technical corners. I got a bit lost in some of the villages but found my way around and then the last part of the course is the best. It travels back into some forested areas with no traffic and it starts to get a little bit hilly.
We expected to be camping in our tent by now but the race organizer gave us a good deal for accommodation this week and it is not much more expensive then camping. He is paying for our stay next week at the same place. It is a camping ground with chalets and they are great, we finally are able to cook our own food and it is good to be inside at night as it seems to get very cold here. I will try to take some photos over the next couple of days. It is so beautiful here, I am so glad that we have come to race the Challenge France race!!!!

Getting my ass kicked at Austria 70.3

2009-05-24T06:19:00.001-07:00

I had to settle for 7th place today, not a result I am proud of but I always seem to get my ass kicked over the half distance. Of course being me I keep trying to do better over this distance but maybe I just have to realise that this distance is not for me. I simply can not go any faster than my ironman speed. In an ironman I'm not holding anything back (on the bike), I simply go as fast as I can for as long as I can. I simply can not go any faster whereas the other girls seem to have an extra gear. The race was very comfortble and I certainly felt like I could keep going for ever and ever at that speed but simply have nothing more to give in order to go faster. I can take consolation in the fact that Chrissie Wellington (2 x world champion) who has never been beaten over the ironman distance had to settle for 6th or 7th over an Olympic distance last week, and that Erika Csomor who was one of the women who broke the world iron distance record last year finished only 25 seconds in front of me. Also there are so many examples of athletes so good at the shorter distance that can not put together a good ironman. So of course I am disappointed but getting your ass kicked is a good thing sometimes in that it gives me a great deal of motivation to work harder. Also I guess I really never give myself a chance over the half distance. I never rest up as my goal is to continue momentum towards the ironman events and that certainly can not be done by tapering for the half races. Also maybe the 45 hour trip here took its toll and I also never carbo loaded for this event (I can tell you that when you are sitting down on a plane for 45 hours the last thing you feel like doing is eating a whole lot of carbs when you get there). So I'm trying not to make excuses but I will have another go in 2 weeks time. I will not be rested for it but I will try to do a little bit better than today.
So to the race, I did this event in 2007 (it was the first year the event was held) and there were about 700 athletes. Today 2400 athletes and the pro field was about 80 athletes compared to about 30 2 years ago. The worst part of this race is that you have to dive off a pontoon instead of start in the water. This had me stressed for days before the race. Not my cup of tea. I have done ITU events before with a dive start but they give you a set amount of space and it is separate women and men. I can tell you diving with the men is no fun. This race gives you no space just find a spot and dive. I had tried to prepare myself for this telling myself it would be hell but for only the first 5 or 10 minutes, and this is pretty much what it was. We dived, I didn't hit water but bodies, and I can tell you it was the worst start I have ever had. I couldn't breath and I was panicking. I honestly thought I might drown I got pushed under so much. I kept trying to get some space by moving around but the first 5 minutes was just hell and then it was fine. The swim covers two lakes with a run of around 200m over a wooden bridge in between where I lost my group so that I was by myself for the whole second lake and I caught back up to the group just at the exit. I lost a lot of time in transition, way too slow and then I ran the wrong way and I ended up about 40 seconds behind 2 other girls.
Onto the bike, I just wasn't going my normal speed. I could do nothing about it, I was going as hard as I could but I was just terrible on the flat. Everyone was passing me. However I am pleased that I biked well on the hills both up and down which is very good news for Ironman France. I have been training all hills and no flat in preparation for France so it is understandable that I suffered on the flat but it is frustrating that I made so much gain over the summer riding fast on the flat and now I feel I have taken a huge step back again. We had one major climb of 8km and I felt very strong going up and passed several people, and then going down it is quite technical which has never been my forte but I felt fine and I was cornering well. I lost all my time on the flat sections of this bike course coming off the bike in 9th spot and about 5.5 min from 1st.
Onto the run and I felt very, very comfortable which is great. Again I felt like I could run that speed for a marathon distance but I just don't have any speed to go any faster. I moved up into 7th and ran the same speed as Erika Csomor the whole way. Unfortunately my timing chip did not work and I don't have a run split but I think I did the same as Erika (she left transition about 20 seconds or so before me and I finished 25 seconds after her) so that would give me a 1.25 which for me is very, very good. I have never really run under a 1.30 before so I am happy with my run and in the end it was a great training day and of course I learnt a thing or two from the experience. The reward if any of coming in 7th is I actually got to eat, shower and have a massage after the race instead of spending hours without food, muscles going stiff trying to give a urine sample for a drugs test. Hence I believe my recovery will be a lot swifter :)
So in two weeks I will have another crack at this distance at Challenge France but after that I think I will stick to the ironman distance. Challenge France looks like a great course and one of the best things about the race is that it starts at 11am, not at the crack of dawn!!!

St Poelten

2009-05-22T08:43:00.001-07:00

We have been here a couple of days now and I have had the opportunity to do some good training. Yesterday I biked for 4 hours on the course with my disc. The course has 900m of climbing and I felt that the disc was weighing me down. The first 18km is flat and there is a section midway of around 20km which is flat where a disc would be beneficial but with me weighing in at just over 50kg it is even more important to have a light wheel and after biking for 2.5 hours today with my normal wheel I definitely feel a lot more comfortable with it.
The first 18km of the course is on a motorway so I can't practise it, but it is straight and flat. It then travels through a wine region with lots of twisty, technical sections and this is where I crashed last time I raced here. You then travel along a flat section like a motorway which I don't think I was supposed to bike on but I did, which later turns back into a normal road along side the Danube river. You then climb for 8km through a forest and then the last part is really technical with lots of turns. You travel through small villages where the houses are right on the roadside and there are lots of blind corners.
The hardest thing about riding on the other side of the world where you bike on the right hand side of the road is when you come to an intersection. You look the wrong way and then pull out and nearly get hit. Of course Brett was right behind me when I did this and I got a bolicking as he thought I was just trying to beat the cars, but I just didn't see them. I actually did this again later. I really need to stop and look properly or I won't make it to the race. Anyway here are some photos that Brett took today on the course. Our cellphones don't work here and because I was riding tubulars (and can't change them) he has had to drive around with me both days.

Today we had to go to the press conference and media interviews which took about 2 hours. I met Sandra Wallenhorst (the ironman world record holder), Lucie Zelonkova (winner Ironman South Africa) and Chris McCormack (who needs no introduction). All really nice people. Tomorrow is the day before the race which means lots of things to organise (the worst part of racing) and then it is race day!!!

What a long trip

2009-05-19T23:15:00.000-07:00

We are in Germany, although we are supposed to be on our way already to Austria. We have some problems. I don't enjoy the trip from New Zealand anymore, it takes so long. I think in total it took 44 hours until we reached our hotel with a few hours sleep here and there. Christchurch-Auckland-Hong Kong-London-Munich. In London they couldn't start our plane so we had to sit there for an hour until we could get going, then when we got to Munich the Eurodrive place that we have booked and paid for a lease car did not pick us up as arranged. We waited for hours, called several different numbers but no answer. We met a man who was very kind and drove us to the depot about 10km from the airport, but although there were lights on and a TV going no one would answer the door so he took us to our hotel and we slept for 5 hours and now in the morning we are trying to sort out the car. It is very difficult to contact them as they still won't answer their phone but Brett has gone back to the airport and hopefully we will be going soon and I hope so because after sitting around eating for nearly 45 hours I feel disgusting and lazy. All I want is to start training again and I will feel human :)

SAFE

2009-05-17T02:22:00.000-07:00

There was an article on the current affairs show Sunday tonight about ill treatment of pigs and it really made me cry. 45% of pigs in New Zealand are being kept in crates where they can not turn around, they are depressed, are screaming and are pretty much going insane. They have to spend up to 5 years of their lives like this just waiting to die and they never experience a normal existence. It is disgusting that these farmers seem to think that this is OK, and in my opinion these farmers should be locked in these crates and have the key thrown away, and then maybe they will understand. I have not eaten pork in years as I have known that pigs are the animals which are treated in the worst possible way, and that I can not trust most of the pork products for sale in the supermarket, but I did not realise it was to such an extent and in New Zealand. So I have decided that I will get behind SAFE and donate monthly to them, hopefully this practise will soon be outlawed in New Zealand.
Please visit http://www.safe.org.nz/ and have a look at the campaigns that SAFE get behind. Not just for the pigs but to hopefully ban other disgusting practices such as battery hen farms and live sheep exports.

Europe here we come!!!

2009-05-14T19:33:00.001-07:00

In a few more days I will be cycling around on the wrong side of the road again. I have been excited for months but now I am actually a bit scared. I don't really want to leave NZ. Why can't the races come to me? This happens each year. In fact when I get to the airport in Germany I always want to jump straight back on the plane and go back home (actually this nearly did happen in 2007 as I forgot to sign my passport and got in a bit of trouble). It is a huge culture shock. So different to New Zealand. It really takes about a week for me to start feeling more comfortable and then I start to have some fun.
So I have four races planned for my trip. Two half distance (Austria 70.3 and Challenge France) and two full distance races (Ironman France and Challenge Roth). Ironman France is my main race and that is on June 28th. I will talk about the other races later but first up for me will be Ironman Austria 70.3 in just over one weeks time.
I last raced this race in 2007 and fell off my bike in wet and slippery conditions going down a hill. I ripped up my legs pretty badly (I still have the scars to prove it) and my face had a nice gash along with a black eye from my sunglasses (and I had to spend the next week or so explaining to everyone that Brett was not beating me up). I was so glad that my bike was unscathed as I had no money and no travel insurance that would cover me whilst racing. I picked myself up and managed to stay in the lead until around the 60km mark at which point we descended for the last part of the race. I was so petrified of falling off my bike again that I lost 10 minutes going down the hill and it felt like everybody was passing me. On the run the Austrian men were going wild. I thought this was because they liked to see a girl racing covered in blood but after the race I found out that it was much more likely because I had ripped my togs (or swim suit for those non Kiwis) and so was showing a lot more skin than I had anticipated. Luckily the cameras were not interested in the 6th place women. So anyway I am going back to do this race properly and I will be up against some tough competition. There will be many ironman winners and short course athletes and the field will include the 3rd and 4th placed women from Hawaii 2008, who also both went under the world iron distance record last year. I am a strange athlete in that I am one of the few women to go under the magical 9 hour mark in an ironman race (I was the only women to do this twice last year) however I struggle to go under the 4.5 hour mark for a half, I just seem to go the same speed. So I am looking to change that. I am actually not that experienced at the half distance having only competed in a few before so I am really looking forward to pushing myself over this distance and also it will be a great opportunity for me to gauge how my training is progressing.
So the bags are not yet packed, I am procrastinating as it has got to be the worst part about traveling. I would really like to thank all my sponsors for their support in getting me to Europe and with the best equipment. K-Swiss has all my clothing and shoe needs covered, I have a brand new BlueSeventy wetsuit and the pointzero3 will come along for the ride just in case there are some unusually warm water temperatures, Em's power cookies well and truly have all my racing and training fuel needs sorted, I have sunglasses and lenses for every light condition courtesy of Oakley, and the best tyres for racing and training thanks to Continental (fingers crossed I do not need to change a tyre in a race), finally my Ceepo bike has had a service as when it returns it will have done 9 ironman races and around 35 000 km and it is now looking as good as new.
If you would like to follow the race updates the race starts at 7am European time on Sunday 24th May, which I believe is 5pm New Zealand time. Race updates will be provided on the ironman website www.ironman.com

Brrrr It's Freezing

2009-05-07T23:10:00.000-07:00

I am very happy that I will be leaving in just over a week because I am freezing!! Today it was raining all day and a high of maybe 7 degrees. It was my rest day (apart from an easy swim) so I was lucky. I made the most of yesterday by doing my 6 hour ride and 1 hour run as the rest of the week is not supposed to be much better.
Today I had an easy swim to do. The 50m pool at QE2 where I swim is closed for the whole of May so I have been swimming at Jellie Park. I actually always thought it was Jelly Park and I imagined swimming in pools of jelly, but it is not so exciting. Today however as it was just an easy swim I thought it would be ok to swim in the diving pool at QE2. It was the most frustrating swim I have ever had. They had an aquaclass in half of the pool and then aquajogging in over a 1/4 leaving 3 really skinny lanes for all of the swimmers. The lane is wide enough for 2 people if you swim right on the lane rope. When I arrived I looked at the 6 swimmers doing breaststroke with their heads up in the "fast" lane and I opted for the one women in the slow lane. The first 2 lengths were fine until a third women joined us, meaning I could swim 1 length at a time if I timed it really well, otherwise I would have to tread water for about 20 seconds in the middle of the pool for every length as I couldn't pass. Luckily one got out soon after leaving just two of us, but the other lady could not swim in a straight line to save herself. The pool was just 20m long but she would weave from one side to the other back and forth about 3 times for each length. I opted not to use my paddles as I didn't want to hurt her and I swam water polo for the majority of the session. Each minute seemed to drag on for a lifetime. Of course as soon as my hour was up so was hers.
I am lucky that my swim is the least of my worries, I have much more work to do on my bike and my run. I always find swim training so frustrating though as I never know what to expect when I turn up to the pool. With my biking and running I train alone so rely only on myself and my equipment. With swimming I am at the mercy of other people's behavior. In the last month or so I have had to swim in the diving pool so many times because of swim competitions or water polo running past what was scheduled, have had to evacuate the pool on 2 occasions because someone has done a poo in the pool, have had to evacuate the pool and stand outside in my togs in 10 degree rain because of a false fire alarm, and have had to swim in freezing pools because the boiler has broken. I would love to live somewhere like Taupo or Wanaka where we could swim in the lake. That way swim training would be like run training!! Anyway I really can't complain as we really do have some really amazing facilities here in NZ for such a small country, and if I want a good swim session all I have to do is get my lazy self out of my bed by 5 am so I can get myself to squad swimming. I just don't want to, I prefer to sleep till 7am and take my chance with the public.
This week I also received my training clothes and shoes from K-Swiss. I am so lucky to have them as my sponsor and they have been more than generous sending some really cool clothes and race gear and cutting edge shoes. I can't wait to wear my new K-Ona's in my next race. I felt mighty proud the other day at the gym walking around in my new K-Swiss t-shirt and shorts and shoes.
I will write shortly about my Europe race schedule for the up-coming months. Till then Keep Warm!!

Re-discovering the treadmill

2009-05-01T14:29:00.000-07:00

Just over 4 years ago I embarked on the journey to get fit. I had done no sport at all in 7 or 8 years and I started by going to the local gym. I asked for a programme and got told to warm up for 20 minutes before each session on the treadmill. I quite enjoyed playing around with the elevation and speed buttons and always ended up with a sprint pushing the treadmill to the max. Someone would often come up to me and ask me what was I training for and I would always say nothing just trying to get fit, at which point they would always say that I should be training for something. So I did and this started my triathlon career. I then discovered the joy of running outside in the forest or on the hills and have not been back on the treadmill since.
That was until yesterday's session. We have had a bit of a cold snap and I didn't fancy running my tempo session on the track and risking injury with cold muscles, so I decided to give the treadmill another go.
I started with a 20 minute warm-up. When getting on I start at 10km/hr and I think wow this feels really hard but slowly I get into my rhythm and can push up the speed. My coach had asked for me to then run 30min at 15kph and then a 25min warm down. The first 10 minutes going at 15kph felt a bit of a strain but then it started to feel really comfortable, so I decided to go a bit faster. 15.5 then 16 then 16.5 etc until by the end of the set I was running at 18kph (not comfortably mind you but I was doing it). So this taught me that my body is capable of doing a whole lot more than my brain is telling it. I would never run this fast in a race, if I did I would be running 33 or 34 min 10km times!! If I ran at 15kph for the whole marathon I would be running around the 2.48 mark. But it has given me a lot of confidence that I will be able to run under the 3 hour mark for my marathon. As I said in previous posts I have done a 3.08 in about 5 races now and it feels very comfortable almost like a jog, but I have been having problems with my mind telling my body that I can go faster. That is why the treadmill is so good, I don't have a choice to slow down or I will fall off the back!! So I will be back on the treadmill next week and with this practice of running faster let's hope that I will be running faster than a 3.08 marathon soon!!

Too many races

2009-04-25T22:28:00.000-07:00

No I have not come to what other's would say is my senses and decided that 5 or 6 ironman races per year is too taxing, quite the contrary. There are just too many races for me to choose from. The decisions of my race schedule occupy my thoughts a lot!! I am always planning my next adventure and always months in advance. It was the beginning of the year that I planned my Europe campaign. I was very excited and it now seems as though I have already been there and raced already. I now won't be excited until I actually get there. Now I am thinking about my post-Hawaii races. Which to do? It is made hard by the fact I am drawn to challenging hilly courses and all the courses post Hawaii seem to be flat. There are 4 ironman races to choose from. Florida, Arizona, Mexico and Western Australia. I have done Western Australia for the last 2 years. It is a great course and a really well organised event but I am ready for a new challenge. So I want to go to America. Ironman Florida appeals to me probably most because it is near the beach, and I think I can go sub 9 hours on that course, and in doing so be the first women to go sub 9 hours on the USA mainland (it has been done in Hawaii). If I do Florida then maybe I can also do Western Australia, or if my double in Europe goes well then maybe I could do the Florida/Arizona double. Anyway if anyone has done any of these races I would love to hear your opinions.
I am actually even more excited right now about 2010. There is a new race to go ahead next May in St George, Utah and when I took a look at the course profile my heart certainly started to race. It looks like the toughest ironman ever. It is at an altitude of around 2500 feet climbing to around 4500 feet, and you do that twice on the bike and then on the run a climb twice of around 1000 feet. It sounds an ideal challenge and I really hope that I will be on that start line. The other race I would love to do next year is Ironman Canada. I have wanted to do this race for the last 2 years but everyone is always telling me it is too close to Hawaii. But next year I hope to ignore this advice.

For the record

2009-04-20T23:22:00.000-07:00

For the record I am 28 years old, not that anyone cares about that but myself, but since Ironman New Zealand I have had to read numerous articles which say that I am 29. I don't want my twenties to fly by any faster than they already are, and besides I don't turn 29 for another 7 months. If I am quoted as being 29 now, will I be in my thirties this time next year? or will I still be 29? Part of being a professional athlete is that you have to endure reading reports about you which are incorrect. The most surprising was when I learnt that I was a mother of three. A mother of three children?? There are plenty of stories about men finding out unexpectedly that they are a father, but I could be the first women to have this shock, or are they talking about my 2 dogs and a cat?
Here are a couple of photos from my training over the last few days.
Here I am pictured with my sometimes training buddy Brett on our yellow rockets.

And the following pics are from my run hill rep session today running up and down the Rapaki track with run training partners Lilly and Raro.

Running in the hills

2009-04-19T01:38:00.000-07:00

I love running in the hills around Christchurch and today was no exception. I ran one of my favourite loops. I started from Sumner running along the promenade then ran up the steep hill up Whitewash Head which then turns into stairs. When I first started running 4 years ago I could never make it to the top of these stairs without stopping. Now it always feels like a huge achievement every time I get to the top. You then can follow the track to Taylor's Mistake and take the track around to Godley Head. This is the best track as it follows along the cliffs above the sea. It is so nice to be running along and to hear the sea crashing into the rocks far below and the view out to sea is amazing. You can then run up to the Summit Road and follow the Mountain bike track to Evan's Pass. There are never many people mountain biking this track as in my opinion it is quite difficult. Certainly for me it is. The one time I tried to do it I ended up going for a walk with my bike. It is on volcanic rocks and the path is not very wide. You can then run back down the Captain Thomas track back to Sumner. That takes me just under 2 hours but there are so many tracks on Summit Road that you can run for hours. I wish I had some photos but I can't really run with a camera.
The last week I have noticed some things about my running. I run with a very high cadence. I can't do anything about that it is natural to me and I can't understand how people can run with a slower turnover. I had an analysis done a few years ago and my cadence was 114 per minute which was the highest he had ever seen. Anyway in my opinion I look very odd when I run and I hate to see myself running. But when I started running I had an even more unusual style. I ran without moving my arms at all. That was until someone pointed that out to me and so I spent the next couple of years concentrating really hard to try and move my arms back and forth when I ran until it became more natural. I also tried to make my legs slower but that did not work as it felt too weird. So last week as I was running I was remembering how I used to run and I tried keeping my arms still and just moving my legs and I took off. I was running next to Brett and as soon as I stopped moving my arms I was way ahead of him. So on Thursday I decided to run like this for my tempo run. The first 2 laps I was 6 seconds faster per 400m than the week before, but after that it slowed down to about 2 or 3 seconds faster per lap. This is crazy!! I try so hard to run a bit more normally and then I find that my natural way of running is a lot faster. So that just proves that you should not change how you run. Your body knows the best and fastest way for it to get around and you should go with that. I certainly will from now on.

No Xterra this year

2009-04-15T21:16:00.000-07:00

Xterra New Zealand is this weekend and for the first time since 2006 I will not be participating. When I first won it in 2006 it was a bit of a surprise. I had just started in triathlon and was doing the race for fun, I just didn't want to get last. So when I ended up winning with no experience of mountain biking whatsoever it was a bit of a shock. Therefore I had to line up again in 2007, won again and had to come back in 2008 where I finished in 4th. It was a great relief not to win which might sound strange but I didn't enjoy "racing" the Xterra. I like to meander around on a mountain bike from time to time but racing it is a different story. While everyone else seemed to be having fun I was actually screaming going down the descents. I was petrified. Sentences kept being shouted from my mouth like "I hate this" and "I don't want to do this". I am not made for mountain biking. I am not a risk taker at all and I also have no downhill skills whatsoever and never get a chance to practice them. Every year that I raced that race I had a crash. The second year was the worst. I went down a really steep descent covered in slippery routes and went head over handlebars, breaking my helmet and my front brake. I was fine to carry on but after the race it took about 2 months for one of the vertebrae in my back to heal and for me to return to normal. So I am happy to no longer have the pressure of having to return to defend my title. The race was really well run and one day I would love to return to be able to race the race to just complete it for fun.
So not having that race on my calender has also meant I can concentrate on my ironman training. The Xterra has always disrupted my training and as I tend to race so much anyway I really need these couple of months to have a good block of undisrupted training. Since October I have raced 4 ironman races which meant I was always either recovering or rebuilding from a race and it is not possible to make any real improvements. So since Ironman New Zealand it is really necessary for me to focus and train really hard without any disruptions. I am getting in some great sessions. Today after my hard track run I had a 2.5 hour hill rep session on the bike. I had to climb 3 hills of over 10 minutes, so I picked 3 really good climbs. The second in particular was really hard. I had been down that hill many times but never had I been up as it is really steep. So today I decided I would finally attempt this climb. It took around 12 minutes and it was so steep, not sure of the gradient, but when I was in the UK I climbed many climbs of 20-25% gradient (it was great as they label them there) and this felt a lot harder mostly because our road surface is rough. I was going at 6 kph in some parts and it was hard to keep my front wheel on the road. I was so relieved to get to the top, then the third climb was a 30 min climb which I usually find quite steep but after climb number 2 it was a breeze in comparison. I was exhausted after that session but Brett has informed me of another hill that I have never done which he thinks is even steeper so I am all pumped for that next week.

Unofficially consistent?

2009-04-13T22:18:00.000-07:00

I have found a new website (http://www.ironmanrankings.blogspot.com) that is quite interesting. It is a ranking system that takes just ironman races (not half ironman or iron distance), gives points for each race and more for the Hawaii 09 world champs race. I am at the top of the table with 2 ironman wins (Challenge Wanaka is not included). There are other websites that have a ranking system but they are quite confusing and include all ironman, half ironman and many other shorter races as well and therefore it is dominated by athletes that race shorter distances as you can often race more shorter distance races than long, and I don't do many races other than ironman races. Anyway it would be great if it was actually an official ironman ranking but it's not, maybe in the future there will be a ranking system to celebrate consistency of achievement over a whole year. I won't be on top for long I don't think as I will not be racing until Ironman France at the end of June.
Brett and I had a great Easter weekend. My mum and dad traveled north to Kaiteriteri for the weekend and so we looked after their house for them. It was great to get a few days in town. Mum and dad live right in triathlon paradise near the port hills. There were hundreds of people out in the weekend making the most of a beautiful weekend cycling and running on the hills. It is so funny to think I lived in their house for the first 18 years of my life and I never once cycled or ran on the hills and now I go there nearly everyday. We found a new running route near the Halswell Quarry. It was a good 4k climb through farmland to Summit road where you can meet up with lots of other tracks. It was a great route as there were not many others going that way and so the dogs could run free. We had to run through a herd of cows though. I hate cows I find them scary. New Zealand used to be covered in sheep but now many of the sheep farmers have converted to Dairy. It is bad as they are causing lots of environmental problems. Rivers and Lakes are becoming dirty and farmers are taking water from rivers and ground aquifers to irrigate their land. I am seeing New Zealand change before my eyes and there is very little I can do about it. It makes me sad to think that within 10 years our beautiful country will be irreversibly damaged.

Trying to run fast in the cold.

2009-04-09T13:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had a tempo run to do so I decided to do it on the grass track at New Brighton. We have a proper athletics track at QE2 but you have to pay to use it and running on a grass track means I have to work a lot harder as the ground is unstable and the grass quite long, so that is better for me. My coach had told me what speed I needed to run at so I worked out what that was per lap and Brett yelled out my times as I ran around so I knew if I was on track and I did make all the times quite easily. It was freezing!!! I did my run at 11am but it was still 6 degrees and it was raining, sleeting, and really windy. That is fine when you are just warming up or doing a steady run, but as soon as I started to run fast it was hard to breath and my whole body was numb. I have turned into a real wimp by not having a winter for 2 years. I hate the cold so much. The only thing I don't like about living in New Zealand is how changeable the weather is. One day it is sunny and fine and the next is so cold. Even in summer in Christchurch it can be 35 degrees for a couple of days and then the next day is 12 degrees. You have to be very adaptable to live here. So yesterday I was thinking very much about how I am so looking forward to the next few months. 5 more weeks here, then 2 months in Europe and I hope it will be hot, then home for 2 weeks of winter, then to Noosa, Australia for 5 weeks, then Hawaii for 5 weeks, then I will do one other ironman in the States either Florida or Arizona. I am most looking forward to the 5 weeks in Hawaii as I love the weather. Everyday I wake up and I know it can't be cold, even if it rains. Although I was freezing in that downpour last year at the awards dinner.
As promised here are a few photos of the early snowfall around Oxford. We don't usually get any snow this early, usually I think not until Late May. It is a special Easter treat.

Snow in April!!??

2009-04-08T00:26:00.000-07:00

I think winter has arrived early unfortunately. Today there is snow on the hills around Oxford and it was freezing. I will try and take some photos tomorrow. Lilly and Raro didn't care though, they still went swimming at the beach.

I decided to swim in the pool instead. It is so great swimming here at QE2. The past few weeks have been a little bit messed up with the pool often being booked for school swimming sports but usually I can always get a lane to myself and the last few days I have pretty much had the whole pool to myself. It is 50m, but sometimes has a bulk head in to make 2 25m pools. I am making the most of it now as in 6 weeks time I will be in Europe and back into crazy pools with no lane ropes and swimming my 5k sets weaving my way around women doing breaststroke with their heads out of the water. I am sure they love having me swim in their pool too as I so much love to do the Butterfly length after length!!

Adastra Scholarship

2009-04-07T01:31:00.000-07:00

Last week I had the pleasure of finding out I had been one of those selected for a Scholarship from the Adastra Foundation.
Adastra is one of the few organisations that supports individual sports people or musicians. They were set up in 2007 and so far have helped many other young Kiwis to achieve their goals. Once a year they give away the elite scholarships which is what I got along with around 50 others, and then they also give "rising star awards" three times a year. I think they are fantastic to help so many people out per year. The money from them is enough to cover my plane travel for the whole year so it is a huge help towards me achieving my goals. You can find out more about them at www.adastra.org.nz .
The scholarship comes just at the right time too. I found out recently that Triathlon New Zealand will no longer be able to fund the long distance triathletes as they have in the past. Last year they gave me $3000 for my travel which was great as it paid for my flights to Europe. However, they are still providing us with sports science which is great as that can really add up over the year, and I know that not many other countries give any support for ironman athletes. It is a little bit of a kick in the guts as it feels like us ironman athletes are not real athletes because we are not an Olympic sport, which got me thinking as to will we ever be an Olympic sport? At the moment the marathon is considered the ultimate test of endurance but it would be great to see an even longer endurance sport whether it is the iron distance triathlon or some sort of multisport. It would be a completely different challenge too. Of course what makes an ironman is the age group athletes. This is what gives the ironman the atmosphere and all the spectators but I would enjoy the mental test of an Olympic iron distance triathlon. It would mentally be so much tougher, no words of support from fellow athletes, and not nearly so many spectators on the side of the road to cheer us on. You would travel for hours without seeing anyone, it would be such a mental test. Also they could start the women hours before the men and it would be completely honest. I hope they do do it one day. I know it won't be 2012 or 2016 but maybe 2020? I would be 39 and by the way Natascha Badmann is still racing I too could maybe be competitive enough.

Big Weekend of Ironman racing

2009-04-05T00:30:00.000-07:00

Well this week I have been in ironman spectator heaven with ironman Australia and ironman South Africa as well as half ironman races in California and New Orleans. I wish I was involved, I have the feeling like everyone else has been invited to a party but not me. I especially would love to be at Ironman South Africa. Both my parent's are from South Africa so I really, really want to do this race one day. Maybe I will do it next year. So far the coverage on ironman live has been great for ironman South Africa, much better than Ironman Australia coverage.
Today was the end of daylight savings so for me this means I may be able to get up in time to go to squad swimming. If there is one thing I hate it is getting up early. Especially with an hour drive to the pool I just hate it. I never have a nap like some athletes do during the day, but I need to have a decent nights sleep and like to wake up without an alarm. Plus since I have all day to train, why get up at 5am? So anyway I have been swimming alone for months, but now I will take advantage of the extra hour and try to get to sleep earlier and wake up earlier. I need to work on my swimming as it has slipped a bit over the last few months. I am fine to get through an ironman in my blueseventy wetsuit, but I need to have my swimming up to standard within the next 6 months for the Hawaii non-wetsuit swim.
On Saturday it was a beautiful day, I went for my long bike ride and then had a 45 minute run off the bike. I usually take our dogs Lilly and Raro with us when I run. They have to go on the lead until we get around the corner and then they can run free. Raro is so fast. Sometimes I am going hard and I look over at Raro and he is just walking!!

Why you should go to the Dentist.

2009-04-03T20:55:00.000-07:00

Well I put off going to the dentist for 8 or 9 years but I finally decided to go last week. My teeth were fine, I have never had a filling (thanks mum for all those fluoride tablets when we were kids!!), however my gums were a different story. The dentist totally freaked me out. He said that on a rating from 0 where gums are healthy through to a 4 where you teeth a falling out and you have irreversible damage to your bones I was a 3. My gums were badly infected he said and I must come back to see the hygienist. So back I went on Wednesday and it was not as scary as I thought it would be. She was so informative and I found it fascinating. Basically athletes are prone to gum disease as we eat a lot of carbohydrates which the bacteria just love, and also as we do a lot of mouth breathing when we are training we are sucking the bacteria right onto our teeth. They like to sit in between our teeth and that is why flossing is so important to flick them out (I formally thought flossing was to get food out of your teeth). The good part is that once you have had all the deposits scraped out then your gums miraculously heal themselves within 48 hours. She also told me that without having an infected mouth I would really notice the difference and now I actually do. I have more energy now, I'm not so tired and I am faster in training. Of course that is probably psychological but I don't care, the mind is so powerful.
This week I have also been busy with Orchestra work which means late nights. I have worked the last 4 weeks and I enjoy it as it is so different from sport. Sometimes I feel my brain is turning to mush without much to think about other than training. Playing in the orchestra requires intense concentration, one slip for a second and you could let down the whole team. Last night we played for the Cello Festival. There were 3 soloists from France, Switzerland and Croatia and this kind of concert is the hardest because I get so nervous that if we (the orchestra) make a slight mistake we could let down the soloist and they could lose the competition. We played for around 5 hours yesterday and I find it so much harder than doing an ironman. People always ask me how I can do so many ironman races in one year, but really I don't find it hard, but last night I got home at around mid night and I was exhausted, way more tired than at the end of an ironman.
This week has also been perfect for training. We had such bad weather in February when I was trying to train for Ironman New Zealand. It rained nearly everyday in Oxford but if we drove to Christchurch it was just cloudy but not raining. We had so much rain in Oxford that everything is now green when it is usually brown at this time of year. However March has been dry and nearly everyday has been blue skies and when I'm riding my bike or running there is absolutely nothing I'd rather be doing. I am so lucky!!

Continental Tyres

2009-03-31T00:17:00.000-07:00

I would like to welcome Continental to my team of sponsors/supporters. This actually happened before my last race but I was scared if I talked about tyres before the race I would curse myself!!! Over the last few years I have trialed a number of tyres and have done all the research. Phrases and words such as rolling resistance, tpi and psi are all now part of my vocabulary. For me it is important to have a good balance with a tyre that is not only fast but puncture resistant as well. I have suffered the disappointment of having punctures ruining my race on two occasions, the first at ironman uk when I had to pull out after not being able to fix a puncture after I stupidly took the wrong valve extenders on my spare and at ironman Singaopore 70.3 where after leading the race with 5k to go in the cycle I suffered a puncture, lost several minutes and then had to run my way into second.
If I happen to get a puncture, as I am so mechanically inept it is not a case of me losing a few minutes but more likely at least 10 minutes, so I need a tyre which is going to make me as fast as possible but also minimise my risk of getting a flat. I have found that with Continental. Of course no tyre is completely puncture resistant, I wish it was, but then I guess tyre companies would be out of business.
So thank you Continental for your support. The other day I was greeted with a huge box filled with enough Continental Competition tubulars, gatorskins, tubular glue and tubes that I will not have to worry about a flat for a long time. Brett now has the fun job of pre-gluing and stretching which should keep him busy!!!

Back into training

2009-03-30T23:42:00.001-07:00

Welcome to my new blog!!! I have struggled with my website at being able to put up photos so I will leave main race reports up on my website and will add in extra updates of my training on this blog.
After competing at Ironman New Zealand at the beginning of March I took a good 2 week break from training. I was planning on maybe having longer but I feel very fresh. I think this is because I have had so many breaks since competing at Hawaii. I had 2 weeks then, then took 3 weeks off after Ironman Western Australia and now another 2 weeks, so I am really looking forward to a prolonged period of training without any racing.
I am really excited about the next couple of months as I finally get to work on my run. After focusing solely on cycling for 2 whole years I feel happy with my progress and that the big improvements have been made. When I first started competing in 2007 I was often 40 minutes off the pace on the cycling section and then had to run my way through the field. Now I am right up with my competition so now the hard work on my run really begins.
I have never focused on my running. I started running in 2005 and found it just came really naturally. I have now been stuck on around a 3.08 for a marathon for some time. In fact I have run a 3.08 in 5 out of my 11 iron distance races and if you count Roth where I did a 3.03 but everyone seems to run around 4 min faster than usual then that makes 6. The good news is that a 3.08 feels very easy for me. A bit like a fast jog and I always seem to have so much left in the tank at the end of the race, so with some hard work I believe it is possible for me to go much faster, and I will need to, to be competitive with the best in the sport running just under the 3 hour mark.
So for the last week and a half I have been doing my own training, but go back onto Greg's programme tomorrow which is a relief as without his structure I do far too much!!!
The last 3 or 4 weeks have also been filled with a lot of Orchestra work. We rehearse at night and as we live 50km from town the days have been long. I leave home often at 9am and I have to be really organised as in the car I must have swim gear, bike gear, run gear and of course violin gear. We finish at around 10 or 11pm and then the long drive back to Oxford. It can be exhausting but I love it.